Yankees and StubHub Agree to Settlement

The New York Yankees and StubHub reached a settlement on April 16, 2013 on a lawsuit, which had aimed to block the online ticket exchange from opening a pick-up center on 161st Street just steps from Yankee Stadium.
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DNAinfo/Patrick Wall

CONCOURSE — The Yankees and ticket reseller StubHub reached a confidential settlement Tuesday, but the fate of a planned StubHub storefront near Yankee Stadium remained unclear.

The lawsuit claimed that StubHub's proposed ticket pick-up site on 161st Street, just steps from the stadium, violated a law that forbids scalping within 1,500 feet of such venues. A judge issued a temporary restraining last month to block the site from opening.

Neither side would comment on the terms of Tuesday’s agreement, though a Yankees lawyer said they were pleased with the settlement, adding, “We believe it’s in the public interest.”

The lawyer, Jonathan Schiller of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, suggested that StubHub could keep the still-shuttered storefront, but it cannot allow fans to retrieve tickets there that they purchased online, which the Yankees had sued to prevent.

The StubHub storefront at 68 E. 161st St. falls within a 1,500-foot "no-scalping zone" around Yankee Stadium.
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DNAinfo/Patrick Wall

“They can have a store there,” Schiller said Tuesday after a brief hearing at Bronx Civil Court. “It’s just what they can do with the store there that we’re suing about.”

StubHub lawyers declined to elaborate.

Glenn Lehrman, a StubHub spokesman, noted that the company opened a temporary pick-up center outside the no-scalping zone within a former Payless ShoeSource store at the Bronx Terminal Market, which would remain open “indefinitely.”

The restraining order will stand until the parties submit a formalized agreement, at which time the Yankees will drop their suit. They are due back in court with that agreement on May 7.

Last year, the Yankees cut ties with StubHub, which had served as the team’s official secondary ticket market and set up its own online ticket exchange with help from Ticketmaster.

The Yankees had complained that StubHub’s unrestricted market allowed ticket prices to tumble below face value. StubHub countered that the team’s steep prices are to blame.

The Yankees may not be the last New York team to challenge the legality of StubHub’s ticket pick-up centers.

A lawyer for the Brooklyn Nets traveled to the Bronx courthouse Tuesday to observe the hearing.

The lawyer declined to explain his presence, and neither the Nets nor StubHub would comment.

StubHub operates a ticket pick-up center near the Nets’ new arena, the Barclays Center, in downtown Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the Nets rely on a competing online ticket exchange — an official NBA resale market powered by Ticketmaster, similar to the Yankees’.

Outside Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, a fan from Los Angeles said he bought two tickets on StubHub for $60 each — about $15 above face value — for Thursday’s game against Arizona.

The fan, Cole Summers, said that because the seller shipped the tickets later than expected, StubHub had rerouted them from his home to a pick-up center — in Manhattan.

“It would be convenient for us to pick them up right here,” said Summers, 36.

Instead, he will have to stop by the Manhattan site Thursday, then venture back up to The Bronx for the game.

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